not only when the improved instrument was almost in the first flush of its popularity, but also when virtuosity and the ability to astonish by difficult technical feats were sometimes mistaken for true artistic achievement. By the time Beethoven’s career as a composer began the sonata had already been developed, as we have seen, especially by Haydn and Mozart, into a model form whose validity was established for all time. Technically, it was a compromise between the German effort toward a logical and coherent harmonic expression, as represented by Emanuel Bach and others, and the Italian tendency toward melodic beauty and grace. The first thirty-one published instrumental compositions of Beethoven, as well as the great majority of all his works, are in this form, which seemed, indeed, to be the ‘veil-like tissue through which he gazed into the realm of tones.’[60] With Haydn this form had reached a plane where structural lucidity was almost the first consideration. ‘Musicians had arrived at that artificial state of mind which deliberately chose to be conscious of formal elements,’ says Parry, ‘and it was only by breathing a new and mightier spirit into the framework that the structure would escape becoming merely a collection of lifeless bones.’ It was this spirit which Beethoven brought not only to the pianoforte sonata, but also to the symphony and quartet. His spirit, as we have seen, both in daily intercourse and in art, was of the sort to scoff at needless restrictions and defy conventionality. While, however, his rebellion against conventionality of conduct and artificiality in society was often somewhat excessive and superfluous, in his art it led him unerringly, not toward iconoclasm or even disregard of form, but toward the realities of human feeling. VI